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Originally published as:

William McDougall. "The Instinct of Laughter and Some Minor
Tendencies." Supplementary Chapter 5 in An Introduction to Social Psychology
(Revised Edition). Boston: John W. Luce & Co. (1926): 474-513.

Editors' notes

The text of this version of An Introduction to
Social Psychology is built up out of two editions. The 20th American
edition, published in 1926, 12 years prior to his death in 1938 and 30th
British edition, published in 1950, 12 years after his death. The later
edition, is essentially a reprinting of McDougall's last revision, prepared at
Duke University in 1936, as the 23rd edition . We apologize for not being able
to present the 1908 version. It appears that no major changes were made to the
text after the 14th edition published in 1919. McDougall's revisions appear to
be limited to the addition of supplementary chapters. He started with three
chapters in the 1919 edition, gradually expanding this to eight chapters by
1936. The additions and McDougall's purposes in including them, are documents
in the series of "Prefaces" reproduced here. The 1926 edition
appears to differ from the 1936 edition in only two ways: a slight reordering
of the first five supplementary chapters and the addition of three new
chapters.

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An Introduction to Social Psychology

Supplementary Chapter 5: The Sex Instinct

William McDougall

IN previous editions of this book the sex instinct was dismissed with a few
words only,[1]
partly because of the
difficulty of treating of it satisfactorily in a book designed to appeal to the
general reader, partly because it had been discussed at great length by several
able writers, and because it seemed that in respect to this one department of
human conduct the main thesis of my book was already generally accepted; the
thesis, namely, that human activities, both mental and bodily, are only to be
explained or understood by tracing them back to a number of innate dispositions,
tendencies to feel and act in certain more or less specific ways, in certain
situations; tendencies which manifest themselves in each normal individual of
the species independently of previous experience of such situations and which,
like the similar innate tendencies of the animals, may properly be called
instinctive.

But I have found that to obtain general acceptance of this theory of human
action is not so easy a task as I had supposed it to be. And, since the
consideration of sexual experience and conduct affords the clearest
illustrations and the most obvious support of the theory, I feel that it would
be foolish to neglect to make good this serious omission.

(
475)

The addition of this supplementary chapter seems to be called for also by the
widespread interest in and lively controversies over questions of mental
pathology which have sprung up in recent years and in which the question of the
rôle of sex has figured very prominently.

Throughout the greater part, and more especially throughout the higher part,
of the animal kingdom, the members of each species are of two kinds, male and
female, and reproduction is sexual — that is to say, reproduction depends upon
the fusion of a living cell formed in the body of a male (the sperm cell) with
one formed in the body of a female (the egg) to form the germ which evolves into
the new individual. This fusion, together with the processes by which the two
cells are brought together, is the process of fertilization. In plants, among
many species of which sexual reproduction is also the rule, fertilization is
left as it were to chance; the plant does nothing more than produce a quantity
of male or female germ cells, or both (pollen and ovules), and set these in such
positions that external forces of nature (generally insects or the wind) bring
together cells of the two kinds. But in the animal kingdom it is the rule that a
great economy of germ cells is effected by the operation of the sex instinct, an
instinct which impels individuals of opposite sex to approach one another at the
time when their germ cells are ready to take part in the process of
fertilization. In many species of fish we see the operation of the sex instinct
at its simplest; the male merely swims close to a female and ejects a cloud of
sperm cells into the water, at the same time as the female extrudes into the
water a number of eggs; and the final approximation and fusion of the egg and
sperm cells is effected by the active approach of the latter to the former and
by a process of penetration of

(476) the egg by the sperm, when contact has been effected. This active
approach of the sperm cell to the egg and its penetration of it remain very
obscure. We are not concerned with it here, further than to note that it strikes
the keynote of male and of female sexuality throughout the animal scale —
namely, the active seeking of the female by the male and the relatively passive
or merely attractive rôle of the female. Apart from this final act of the germ
cells, the process of fertilization consists essentially in the two stages of
the operation of the sex instinct : first, the near approach of two individuals
of opposite sex; secondly, the discharge of the reproductive cells in such a way
that they come into near neighbourhood of one another.

The sex instinct is Nature's provision for the effecting of these first two
stages of the process of fertilization, the process which initiates the
development of each new individual. Like other instincts it is a complex,
innately organized, psycho-physical disposition, consisting of three parts, each
subserving one of the three phases that we distinguish in every complete mental
or psycho-physical process, namely the cognitive, the affective, and the
conative; three parts which, from the point of view of nervous function and
structure, we may call the afferent or sensory, the central, and the efferent or
motor.[2]

It is important to note that, even at the simple level

(
477) of sex activity displayed by the fishes, the operation of the instinct
implies or presupposes a differentiation of the two sexes in respect of external
or perceptible characters which serve as recognition-marks of sex. For, in the
absence of such perceptible differences between the sexes (commonly called
secondary sex characters), it would be impossible for the male to distinguish
the female of his species from his fellow males, and hence impossible to achieve
that first stage of the process of fertilization, the approach of the male to
the female. Accordingly we find that in all bisexual animal species the two
sexes are differentiated by the possession of such recognition-marks of sex;
marks which may be perceptible by any one of the senses, but which in the higher
animals most commonly appeal to the eye, though not infrequently to the other
great organs of perception at a distance, namely, the ear and the nose.

It is still more important to note that this first stage of the fertilization
process, the approach of the male to the female, presupposes (on the part of the
male at least) an innate capacity to recognize the female, i.e. to
distinguish the female from the male, to perceive her as different by reason of
her recognition-marks of sex. For, though it may seem plausible to suppose that,
in the more intelligent and social species, the male learns through experience
to distinguish the female, this cannot be maintained of the less intelligent
species, and is clearly inadmissible of the many species in which the male, on
first encountering the adult female, is attracted by her in a way in which he is
not attracted by males. The innate capacity or disposition to recognize the
other sex by aid of the recognition-marks of sex is, then, an essential feature
or part of the complex innate disposition which is the sex instinct. Without
this perceptual side

(
478) the instinct would be well-nigh useless to the animals; it would
achieve the first essential step of the process of fertilization but very
wastefully and uncertainly. The sex instinct, then, illustrates very clearly a
much-neglected fact of instinct on which I have insisted in the earlier chapters
of this volume, the fact, namely, that an instinct is not only an innate
disposition to act and to feel in a more or less specific manner, but is also an
innate disposition to perceive or perceptually discriminate those things towards
which such reactions are demanded by the welfare of the species.

In many species it is not sufficient that the cognitive side of the instinct
should enable the perceptual discrimination of one sex from the other. A further
differentiation of it is required. For the second stage of the process of
fertilization, the extrusion of the germ cells at the required place and time,
is also accomplished instinctively. In the simplest cases the mere proximity of
two individuals of opposite sex seems to suffice to produce or excite this
further reaction; as when the male fish or frog merely pours out his germ cells
into the water in which the female is laying her eggs. But in many species the
second stage of the process involves a more complex action or train of actions,
that is to say, as in so many other cases, the motor issue of the excitement of
the instinct is not a single reaction or a single or repeated movement of one
kind, but a chain or series of reactions, each step of which brings about a new
situation that evokes the next step.

In mammals the second stage of the process of fertilization is complicated by
the necessity of bringing the sperm cells into the near neighbourhood of the
egg, while the egg still remains within the womb of the female; this being the
only place in which the fertilized egg

(
479) finds the conditions necessary to the earlier stages of its
development. In order that the sperm cells may be brought into such a position
that they may of their own feeble powers of locomotion reach the egg in the
womb, the male is provided with the organ of intromission, and the female with
the antechamber to the womb. And to the same end the sex instinct is modified
and complicated in such a way that the second stage of the process of
fertilization, the emission of the sperm cells by the male, is no longer excited
by the mere proximity to, or by mere contact with, the female. It is necessary
that the organ of the male shall enter the antechamber of the womb, and that
emission of the sperm cells shall not take place until this is accomplished. In
order that the second stage of fertilization shall be completed in this manner,
the sex instinct of the male requires to be complicated on its perceptive as
well as on its executive side. The male accordingly is endowed, not only with
the capacity of recognizing the female, but also with the capacity of singling
out the entrance to the womb. And on its executive side the male's instinct is
complicated in such a way that he is impelled to embrace the female in the
appropriate manner. The sex instinct of the mammalian female requires less
specialization than that of the male; for, her rôle being passive and receptive
rather than active and aggressive, she does not need to be innately endowed with
any tendency to participate actively in the second stage of the process of
fertilization (a point of some importance for the understanding of the
difference between male and female sexuality). Nevertheless, in some species the
instinct seems to impel her to respond to the movements of the male with
appropriate corresponding behaviour. In both sexes the activity of the sex
instinct is supported by a powerful impulse and

(480) accompanied by an emotional excitement, which, when the process of
fertilization runs its normal course, waxes throughout, attains its climax, and
then suddenly subsides. And the whole activity seems normally to be highly
pleasurable, in accordance with the general law that the natural and unimpeded
progress of any instinctive activity towards its natural end is pleasurably
toned.

This brief and general description of the nature and operation of the sex
instinct in mammals holds good for the human species; and, although the
operation of the instinct is often (especially among persons of culture and
refinement) very much complicated and obscured by the influence of the will, and
of personal sentiments and ideals, it nevertheless is often displayed in
relatively uncomplicated and direct fashion. Indeed, a principal source of the
difficulties and dramas of civilized life is to be found in the fact that, owing
to the great strength of the impulse of this instinct, men, and even women, who
have attained a high level of character and culture are liable to be swept away
by a flood of sexual passion, and, the restraints normally maintained by their
higher sentiments being temporarily broken through, to be impelled to yield to
the prompting of the instinct in a manner almost as simple and direct as the
mating of the animals.

As in most species of the higher animals, the sex instinct in man does not
attain its full development until the period of youth, the period of growth and
acquisition, is well-nigh completed. The questions of the age at which the
instinct normally comes into operation in man, and of the course of its
development, are still in dispute; and in respect to them opinions still differ
very widely. These very important topics will be discussed in a final section of
this chapter. At present we may confine our attention

(481) to some special features and problems of the fully developed instinct
in man.

It is maintained by some high authorities on the psychology of sex[3]
that the activities which I have described in the foregoing paragraphs as
constituting the first and second stages of the process of fertilization are
respectively the expressions of two impulses which they denote by the terms
impulses of " contrectation " and of " detumescence." But it would be a mistake
to attribute these two stages of the sexual act to separate instincts. In the
animal world we may observe numerous instances of " chain instincts," instincts,
that is to say, each of which manifests itself in a chain of activities; each
step of such a chain prepares the way for a further step, the new situation
created by each step modifying in detail the direction and operation of the
impulse, while yet the impulse towards the one biological end seems to dominate
and to supply the conative energy of the whole process. As examples of such
chain instincts we may cite those which impel most of the constructive efforts
of animals (the nest-building of birds, the web-weaving of spiders), and such
actions as those by which a squirrel buries a nut in the ground, or a bird first
lays eggs in some chosen spot and then broods over them. Just as in these
instances the first step of the instinctive process creates a situation which
excites the second step, so the first stage in the process of fertilization in
man prepares in a double manner the situation which excites the activities of
the second stage. The perception of a suitable individual of the opposite sex
evokes the impulse of approach, and at the same time tends to bring about that

(482) state of tumescence or turgescence of the sex organs which (in the male
at least) is a necessary preliminary to the second stage of the process. But
though the bodily activities of the two stages are different, the quality of the
affective excitement that accompanies the activities is recognizably the same
throughout both stages.

This sexual excitement, when it occurs uncomplicated by other emotions and
tendencies, is properly called " lust." It is unfortunate that this word has
lost its respectability owing to the opprobrium heaped upon lust by Christian
moralists. But, for the purposes of psychology, it is a necessary and useful
word. We must frankly recognize that, in spite of all the hard things that have
been said about lust, it is an essential element in the emotional conative
attitude of human lovers towards one another; and that, no matter how much the
attitude and the feeling of refined lovers may be modified and complicated by
other tendencies, lust nevertheless strikes the ground tone and supplies the
chief part of the mental and bodily energy which is put forth so recklessly and
copiously in the service of sex love.

But, while it is necessary to recognize that lust enters into and colours the
emotions evoked in the lover by the presence or the thought of the beloved one,
we must avoid the mistake (not infrequently made) of assuming that the mere
direction of the sex impulse towards a particular person in itself constitutes
sexual love. Such habitual direction of the sex impulse towards one person is
certainly an essential condition or feature of sex love; but an habitual lusting
for a particular person would be a crude sentiment not worthy of the name of
love. Sex love is a complex sentiment, and in its operation the protective
impulse and tender emotion of the parental

(
483) instinct are normally combined with the affect of the sex instinct,
restraining, softening, and ennobling the purely egoistic and somewhat brutal
tendency of lust.

The presence of the maternal element in the attitude of a woman towards her
lover has been recognized by countless writers of romance. And that the tender
protective element commonly enters into the sentiment of the man for the beloved
woman is equally obvious. That sex love should thus combine the most purely
altruistic with the most ruthlessly egoistic tendency of human nature, seems
sufficiently accounted for in the case of the woman by the great strength of the
maternal impulse and the ease with which it is aroused in her in all personal
relations; and in the man it is perhaps sufficiently accounted for by the fact
that woman, especially at the age at which she is most strongly attractive to
man, resembles in many respects, both mental and physical, the child, the normal
object of the parental or protective impulse.

It is, then, a mistake to attribute to the sex instinct all the
manifestations of sex love; for this sentiment is commonly highly complex, and
involves not only the affective dispositions of the sexual and parental
instincts, but those of other instincts also, notably those of the instincts of
self-display and submission. The importance of distinguishing between the sex
instinct and the sentiment of sex love, and of recognizing the complex
constitution of the latter, is well illustrated by the controversies raised
among the mental pathologists by the doctrines of Professor Sigmund Freud. Freud
proposes to extend very greatly the sphere commonly attributed to sexuality in
human life, assigning a sexual root to mental and nervous disorders of almost
every kind, as well as to all dreams and to other processes of normal mental
life

(
484) that have no obvious connection with sex. It seems to me that this
immense extension of the sphere of sexuality (which has excited acute opposition
to Freud's doctrines and obscures for many the important and valuable truths
contained in them) is in large part an error due to the neglect of the
distinction insisted upon in the foregoing paragraph. For Freud and his
disciples, taking the sentiment of sex love as the type of all love, regard as
manifestations of sexuality all modes of behaviour and of feeling that are of
the same kind as those that occur as phases in the life-history of this
sentiment. They are thus led to regard as sexual, or as containing a sexual
element, the love of parents for their children and of children for their
parents, as well as every other variety of love and every manifestation of
tender emotion. Expressions of other affective dispositions that commonly enter
into the composition of the sentiment of sex love have been, in a similar way
and for the same reason, regarded by writers of this school as indicative of the
presence of the sexual tone in relations in which they are displayed, or spoken
of as components of the normal sexuality of man and woman.[4]
If we carefully observe this distinction between the sex instinct and the
complex acquired sentiment of sex love, we shall find no reason to regard the
sex instinct as comprising

(485) any tendencies other than those which are directly concerned in
effecting the first and second stages of the process of fertilization.

If we adopt this relatively restricted view of the scope of the sex instinct
in man, it still appears as one of considerable complexity on its executive
side; and on its perceptual side it is certainly more complex than has
commonly been assumed. In earlier chapters of this book I have urged, in
opposition to a widely held view, that the structure of an instinct generally
involves one or more perceptual dispositions which render the possessor of the
instinct capable of attentively singling out and discriminatively perceiving
objects or situations of the kind that demand the instinctive reaction. The sex
instinct is no exception to this rule. We have seen that in the animals the
presence of the recognition-marks of sex implies that the sex instinct renders
them capable of distinguishing the members of the opposite sex from those of
their own, and that this truth is especially obvious in the case of those
animals which react sexually on the first occasion of encountering a member of
the other sex. In man, since the sexual instinct does not normally ripen or
become excitable until the individual has greatly developed both his perceptual
capacities and his power of self-direction, no such direct evidence of the
innate perceptual organization of the instinct can be cited; but there is no
reason to believe that in this respect the sex instinct of the human species has
under-gone any considerable degree of degeneration or involution. And we have
indirect evidence supporting the view here maintained. In the first place, the
great emotional effect and aesthetic value of the human form, especially of the
female form for man, can hardly be accounted for without this assumption. But of
greater

(486) evidential value is the fact that the boy or youth who knows nothing of
the facts of sex may, and often does, experience the strong and for him
altogether mysterious attraction and emotional influence of the female form, and
may find that his imagination is strongly occupied by it, even against his will.
If we reject the view I am urging, we are compelled to regard the direction of
the sex impulse towards the opposite sex as determined by experience of sexual
pleasure obtained through contact with the other sex; or as resulting from the
acquired knowledge that the other sex is the natural object of the impulse and
that only through a member of that sex can the sexual impulse, craving, or
desire, obtain full satisfaction. Attempts have been made to explain the fact in
both these ways. The former way is a special application of the pleasure-pain
theory of action, the fallacy of which has been exposed in a foregoing chapter.
Both kinds of attempt break down in face of the fact that the sex attraction is
sometimes felt and displayed prior to all experience of sexual pleasure and to
all knowledge of the facts of sex.[5]

It is true that perverted example, or early acquaintance with perverse modes
of obtaining sex pleasure, may and too often does pervert the direction of the
sex impulse, in the ways denoted by the terms " sexual inversion " and " sexual
fetishism "; but the fact that the normal direction of the sex impulse so often
asserts

(
487) itself in spite of early acquired experience and knowledge of these
unfortunate kinds is strong evidence that the impulse is innately directed to
the opposite sex.[6]
And such innate
direction necessarily implies that the instinct is innately organized on its
afferent side for the perceptual discrimination of the opposite sex by aid of
the secondary sex characters.

Consideration of the sex instinct thus affords very strong support to the
view of the nature of instinct adopted and maintained throughout this volume,
the view, namely, that an instinct is an innately organized capacity, not only
to act and feel in a certain manner, but also to perceive the object upon which
the action and the feeling are directed. Psychologists are very slow to accept
this view, although much of the behaviour of animals, especially of the higher
insects, implies it in the most obvious and unmistakable fashion. Their
reluctance seems to be due to the fact that " innate ideas " are out of fashion
and that to admit innate dispositions to perceive objects of special kinds is
perilously near to admitting " innate ideas "; for it is but a small step from
an innate perceptual disposition to an innate disposition to represent, or think
of, an object apart from its presentation to the senses. In my view there are
good grounds for believing that dispositions of both kinds are inheritable and
innate; and in any case we ought to be guided in this question by impartial
consideration of

(488) the facts, rather than by the prevailing
philosophical fashions.[7]

The principal thesis of this book is that each instinct is a great source or
spring of the psycho-physical energy[8]
that supports our bodily and mental activities. This principle is illustrated
very vividly by the sex instinct.

It is generally recognized that in men and animals alike the sex impulse is
apt to manifest itself in very vigorous and sustained efforts towards its
natural end; and that in ourselves it may determine very strong desire, in the
control of which all the organized forces of the developed personality, all our
moral sentiments and ideals, and all the restraining influences of religion,
law, custom, and convention too often are confronted with a task beyond their
strength.

It is generally recognized also how the energy of this impulse may quicken
and animate the whole organism, and how it sustains and invigorates all
activities which are entered upon as steps or means towards the attainment of
the end of the instinct. In this connection the sex instinct is especially
interesting in two respects. First, it illustrates, better than any other, the
fact that

(
489) the instinct may work strongly within us, impelling us to actions that
bring us nearer to the end of the instinct, while yet that end remains undefined
in consciousness. Thus a youth, though totally inexperienced in and ignorant of
sexual relations, nevertheless may feel very strongly attracted to a member of
the other sex, impelled to seek her neighbourhood, to follow her, and to find
enormous emotional value and significance in the slightest contact. In such a
person the sex impulse may be nothing more than a vague restlessness, a blind
craving for some object or impression or experience that he cannot define to
himself ; yet under favouring conditions the impulse may carry him on
irresistibly to the accomplishment of the actions which constitute both the
first and second stages of the process of fertilization.

Secondly, the social consequences of the sexual act are so serious that great
hindrances are opposed to its completion, both by the constitution of human
nature (especially female nature) and by the customs and conventions, the
traditions and ideals, which a moralized society imposes upon its developing
members. Yet the conditions that tend to excite the instinct are very frequently
realized in normal social intercourse. Hence it follows that in most members of
a civilized society (especially in the younger celibate members) the instinct is
frequently excited in some degree, but only comparatively rarely (in some cases
never) permitted to accomplish its end. The impulse of this instinct therefore,
in addition to subserving the primary function of reproduction of the species,
plays a large part (in co-operation with other tendencies) in determining the
forms and maintaining the activities of social intercourse. In the games of
children and young people, in their dances and social gatherings, the mingling
of the sexes gives a zest to the enjoyment

(490) and adds to the vigour of both bodily and mental activity, through the
appeal to the sex instinct ; even though the gathering be of the most decorous,
and though no single participant be capable of defining the end of the instinct
or be aware of the source of his special animation. And in such games as
kiss-in-the-ring, in the sophisticated dances of modern society, in flirtations
of all degrees, and in the more or less self-conscious efforts of deliberate
courtship, the operation of the sex impulse is obvious enough.

Dance and song and the writing of love letters, which figure so largely in
the arts of courtship, connect the large fields of social activity in which the
influence of the sex impulse is very obvious, with an equally extensive and
perhaps even more important province of human activity in which the influence of
the sex instinct is more obscure but undoubtedly present, namely, the production
and enjoyment of works of art.

The dance and song and literary composition which are used more or less
deliberately in courtship may clearly be brought under the general principle
that the conative energy of the instinct maintains all activities that appear to
be means towards the attainment of the instinctive end. In this respect they are
comparable to the efforts of the young man to secure an economic position which
will enable him to marry the girl of his choice; efforts which, as we know, are
often very energetic and long sustained.

But this principle will hardly explain the part of the sex impulse in those
aesthetic activities whose clearly envisaged and sufficient goal seems to be the
completed work of art. Perhaps we may partially explain the influence of the sex
instinct in such works by invoking the principle that the means to a goal tend,
when that

(
491) goal is long pursued, to become desired as ends in them-selves; and
where the goal of an instinct is not explicitly defined in consciousness, as is
so frequently the case with the sex instinct, this conversion of means into ends
or goals is no doubt especially apt to occur.

But the connection between the sex instinct and artistic production is
probably more direct in many instances. The stirring of the sex impulse may
suffuse the body with energy and the mind with a vague emotion and a longing for
something indefinable; and this surplus energy, not being consciously directed
to any goal, and being denied the opportunity and the conditions which would
lead on the impulse to define itself in action and in thought, vents itself in
spontaneous and self-sufficing, i.e. purely lyrical, activities, such as
mere gambollings, dance, or song. If this be admitted, it remains a very
difficult problem to explain how and why these modes of expending the sex energy
assume the forms which we regard as specifically artistic. This is perhaps the
most fundamental problem of aesthetics. No doubt much is due to example and
tradition; but I do not think that the full answer can be given, unless we
recognize far more fully than is usual with psychologists the innate
organization of the perceptual side of the sex instinct. If we consider the
facts on the comparatively simple plane of animal life, we find, I think, the
key to the understanding of the relation of sex to art. Who can doubt that the
female nightingale is thrilled by the music of the male as by no other sound;
that the evolutions of the male pigeon are pleasing to the hen bird; and that in
both cases this is true because the sex instinct is so organized as to be
excited by these impressions? That the stimulation of the sex instinct in men
and women yields a pleasurable excitement even when there is no anticipation of
further

(
492) indulgence of it, is sufficiently shown by the extent to which the
lower forms of art, literature, and public entertainment rely upon a titillation
of the sex impulse in making their appeal to the public. When the plastic and
pictorial arts represent beautiful human forms, they make appeal to the same
element ; but in their higher expressions they present these objects in such a
way as to evoke also wonder and admiration, a respectful or even reverential
attitude which prevents the dominance of the sex impulse over the train of
thought, and, arresting its bodily manifestations, diverts its energy to other
channels. This diverted energy then serves to reinforce the intellectual
activity required for the apprehension of the various subtle harmonies of line
and light and colour; that is to say; the energy liberated by the appeal to the
sex instinct is utilized in enhancing the activity of purely aesthetic
apprehension.

But, even though this account be in the main correct, it seems probable that
we still have not exhausted the indirect influences of the sex instinct. It is
widely held, and though it is difficult to adduce any convincing or crucial
evidence, the view appears well founded, that the energy of the sex impulse, if
it is not expended wholly in its own channels of expression, may function as a
re-enforcer of purely intellectual activities in situations that make no appeal
to the instinct. If this be true, we can hardly hope to find any psychological
explanation of the facts, though physiology may render them in some degree
intelligible.

Such indirect utilization of the sex instinct as a great fund of energy
available for other than purely sexual activities is the process which Freud has
proposed to call " sublimation "; and we may conveniently adopt this term and
recognize the general truth of the notion,

(
493) without committing ourselves to the acceptance of all, or indeed of any
other, of the Freudian doctrines.

The regulation of the sex instinct always has been and must ever continue to
be a difficult problem for the human race. And the difficulty of the problem
increases, rather than diminishes, with every forward step of civilization and
every increase of the control of far-sighted intelligence over the more
immediate promptings of our instinctive nature. For the intellect of man, being
superimposed upon this strong animal tendency, whose exercise, because of its
great strength, is attended by such intense pleasure or gratification, leads him
to seek to obtain the greatest possible amount of this pleasure, and at the same
time to seek, with ever more success as intellect and knowledge increase, to
frustrate the end for the service of which this strong instinct was evolved.
This is a fundamental disharmony of human nature which not only endangers the
happiness of individuals of all times and places, but also threatens every
advancing civilization with stagnation and decay. Nature cannot solve the
problem for us by altering the innate constitution of the human race; for to
weaken either factor of this discord would be fatal to humanity; the weakening
of the instinct would mean the extinction of the race; the weakening of the
intellect would mean the loss of human attributes and of all that renders human
life of more value than the animals'.

The system of sexual morality represents the cumulative effort of society to
control and counteract this inevitable result of Nature's supreme achievement,
the superposition of man's higher moral and intellectual capacities upon a basis
of animal instincts; it is the attempt to solve this problem which Nature has
left unsolved, to harmonize the life of intellect and the development of

(494) self-conscious moral personality with the needs of the race and the
promptings of the instinct which at lower levels of evolution effectively serves
life's most fundamental law, namely propagation and increase. And so we find
that in societies of all levels of culture the operation of this most powerful
instinct is more or less success-fully regulated by an array of laws and
conventions, supported by the strongest sanctions of custom and public opinion,
of religion and of superstition. And, apart from its primary operations, the
great strength of the sex impulse gives it, as we have seen a wide range of
secondary functions of great importance for the higher life of man-kind. The
problem before every civilization that aspires to attain and maintain a high
level of culture is, therefore, not merely so to regulate the sex instinct as to
prevent its exerting an influence injurious to the interests of the higher
culture, while it performs its all-important primary function; but also to
direct it in such a fashion that its immense energy shall be brought as freely
as possible into the service of the higher culture. Hence the importance of a
knowledge of the nature and working of the instinct and of its normal course of
development.

Among those who have recognized the existence of the sex instinct in man, it
has been usual to regard it as lying latent in the child up to the age of
puberty, and as then rapidly maturing, and attaining its full strength in the
course of a year or two.

But in recent years a very different view of the course of sexual development
has been vigorously propagated by the school of medical psychologists of which
Professor Freud is the leader and inspirer. It is not yet possible to form a
decided opinion upon the doctrines of this school. I incline strongly to the
view that they have extended to normal individuals generalizations which

(
495) are true only of a certain number of persons of somewhat abnormal
constitution, from among whom their patients have been drawn. But, since it is
possible that their views are in the main true of the normal constitution, and
since, even, if as I suggest, they are true only of a minority, this minority
may be numerous, it seems necessary to give here some brief outline of them.

Freud's doctrine[9]
differs from
generally received views in maintaining that the sexual life of the individual
begins its development at or even before birth. Freud asserts that the child's
sexuality, although awake from earliest infancy, is not at first an impulse
definitely directed towards any object, but consists rather in a capacity for
finding pleasure in a variety of modes of sensory stimulation and bodily
movement. Without going so far as to maintain (with some authors) that all
pleasure is sexual, he regards the pleasure found in these stimulations and
movements as essentially sexual.[10]
The
thumb-sucking of infants is regarded as the type of such infantile sexual
processes. Freud sees in this habit a blind seeking of sexual gratification; he
regards it as the source of a number of peculiar hysterical troubles of later
life and believes that it always involves the risk of the development of such
troubles. He describes the mucous membrane of the lips, therefore, as an "
erogenous zone," i. e., a sensory area stimulation of which may give rise to
sexual excitement. And he believes that every infant possesses, in addition to
the primary erogenous zone (which consists of the external sex organs
them-selves), a number of such zones, any one of which may

(496) become unduly prominent, if in any way it is unduly stimulated, thus
bringing about a perversion of the sex impulse; for normal development can only
take place if all these zones become duly subordinated to the primary one.
Accordingly, he describes the normal infant as " polymorphous perverse," and
believes that accidents of development leading to perversion very frequently
occur.

This initial stage of objectless sexual excitement or " auto-erotism " is
said normally to persist throughout the period of infancy proper; until, about
the age of seven years, there begin to operate certain tendencies which repress
or keep in check the crude sex impulses, namely, shame, loathing, and disgust.
Under favor-able conditions of environment and training, the sex tendencies
remain more or less completely repressed throughout the period of childhood
proper. At puberty they increase in strength; but, if the repressing forces are
now re-enforced by moral training and aesthetic ideals, they manifest themselves
only in sublimated forms; that is to say, the energy of the sex impulse is
diverted from the channels of direct sexual expression and is " long-circuited "
into channels in which it supports and intensifies intellectualized and refined
modes of concern with the natural object of the impulse, namely, persons of the
opposite sex. The processes of repression and sublimation are regarded as
somewhat precarious, and as liable at every stage to suffer interferences which
will lead to crude and direct manifestations of a normal or perverted kind. It
is said, for example, that the sex impulse of the boy normally and properly
becomes directed towards the opposite sex by the pleasure that he obtains from
the tender ministrations of his mother; but that there is great danger in
encouraging the boy's

(497) affection towards his mother and in her lavishing caresses upon him,
because such treatment is apt to result in his sex impulse becoming too strongly
fixed upon this its first object, a result which may afterwards lead to troubles
of various kinds. The impulse, thus directed, becomes, it is said, repressed,
driven into subconsciousness, where it works in a subterraneous fashion, and
expresses itself in indirect and symbolical ways in the youth's thoughts,
feelings, and conduct. It is said, for example, that the youth grows jealous of
his father; but that this jealousy, being repressed, may show itself only in an
exaggerated deference towards him. If this state of affairs continues, no great
harm is done, save that the youth is rendered incapable of falling in love in a
normal manner with a girl of his own age. But in some cases, it is said, this
state of things issues in the most awful domestic tragedies of which " Hamlet "
and " OEdipus Rex " are the type. This school of psycho-pathology describes such
a repressed but sub-consciously operating tendency as a " complex "; it speaks
of a repressed sexual attraction to the mother with a consequent repressed
jealousy of the father, as of the type of the " OEdipus complex "; and it claims
to have traced the influence of complexes of this type in the forms of many
myths, legends, and works of literature.

In attempting to form an opinion on this Freudian doctrine of infantile
sexuality, it is important to remember that, even if we find ourselves compelled
to reject it for the normal majority, it may be at least partially true of a
minority. For, in regard to the most fundamental point at issue, namely, the age
at which sexuality is to be attributed to the child, general biological
considerations prepare us to find that individuals differ widely in this
respect. It may well be that in an unknown proportion of human beings the sex
instinct begins to be excitable

(
498) at a very early age, while in others, probably the great majority, this
occurs at a much later stage of development; and it is not improbable that the
neurotic patients, on the study of whom the Freudian doctrine is chiefly based,
belong to the minority, and that it is just this peculiarity of constitution
that renders them liable to their disorders. In considering the question of
infantile sexuality, we must therefore attach but little weight to the evidence
of it drawn from the study of psycho-neurotic patients, and must rather weigh
the positive indications for and against it provided by healthy persons.

I have already indicated the fallacy of one piece of reasoning advanced in
support of the Freudian view, namely, the acceptance of all manifestations of
personal love or affection as evidence of sexuality; for this, as was said, is
due to the confusion of the sexual instinct with the sentiment of love. Only one
other piece of evidence on this side seems deserving of serious consideration;
the fact, namely, that a considerable number of infants acquire the habit of
playing with their sex organs in a manner which implies that such stimulation is
pleasurable. If this were the rule with the majority of infants the argument
would be very weighty. But that is by no means true. And we must remember that
the infants who acquire this habit may belong to the minority of abnormal innate
constitution whose existence we have admitted to be probable. It is very
possible also that, by undue stimulation of the sex organs of a normal infant
(an act of which unscrupulous persons are some-times guilty), the sex instinct
may be forced to a precocious and partial development. In these two ways we may
account for the autoerotism which seems to be manifested by some infants,
without regarding it as a normal stage in the development of the sex instinct.

(499) It may be added that most of the other arguments adduced by Freud in
support of his doctrine of infantile sexuality (such as e.g. the prevalence of
thumb-sucking) may be dismissed on the ground that the doctrine of erogenous
zones, with which they are bound up, is in itself very obscure, seems incapable
of being rendered clear and self-consistent, and betrays a conception of the
nature of the sex instinct which is vague, chaotic, and elusive, uncontrolled by
consideration of the facts of animal instinct and inconsistent with these facts.
In support of this last point of this indictment, it may suffice to point out
that the Freudian conception of the nature and development of sexuality is
radically incompatible with the view that the sex impulse is directed towards
the opposite sex by the innate organization of the instinct— a view which is
certainly true of many of the animals and which in its application to the human
species is, as we have seen, very strongly based.

On the other side, two strong arguments may be adduced. First, a large number
of auto-biographical accounts of sexual development have been published.[11]
Examination of these reveals the fact that, in a very large proportion of cases,
the first stirrings and promptings of sex feeling that can be remembered by the
subject were experienced in or about the eighth year of life. Freud maintains
that infantile sex experiences are not remembered by the adult because the
memory of them is actively repressed. But he entirely fails to explain why those
which he supposes to occur before the eighth year should be forgotten, while
those which occur between that age and puberty are remembered. It is also very
important to note in this connection that a certain number

(
500) of these auto-biographers can distinctly remember having been made in
infancy (i.e., before the eighth year) the victims of unscrupulous persons who
have deliberately attempted, but without success, to excite them sexually; while
their accounts show that similar attempts made a few years later have been or,
if repeated, would undoubtedly have been successful.

Secondly, the observation of the behaviour of children gives strong support
to this view. It is at about the age of eight years that the behaviour of
children commonly begins to exhibit indications of their attraction towards and
a new interest and feeling towards members of the other sex. Before this age
some children display warm personal affection; but such displays commonly
involve nothing that implies the operation of the sex instinct. And one feature
of them constitutes indirect but weighty evidence of the absence of the sex
element, namely, the complete absence of any reserve or bashfulness in their
relations with the objects of their affection, although in other circumstances
bashfulness may be strongly displayed. On the other hand, as soon as the sex
instinct begins to be operative (i.e. from about the eighth year onwards)
bashfulness is apt to dominate the attitude of the child in his relations to
persons of the other sex (especially, perhaps, in relations of the boy to girls
whose attraction for him is strong). This change of attitude and expression[12]
takes place, then, at about the age to which adult reminiscence agrees in
attributing the first promptings of the sex impulse; and it can, I submit, only
be explained by the assumption that a new and powerful factor normally comes
into operation

(
501) about this age, a factor which can be assigned to no other source than
the sex instinct, and which, if we identify it with the sex impulse, affords
adequate explanation of the facts.

The manifestations of the sex instinct are intimately related with and
modified by modes of behaviour which are popularly attributed to a vaguely
conceived function or faculty termed modesty. But the attribution of them to "
modesty " is by no means an explanation of them. " Modesty " and " modest " are
terms properly used to denote the quality of character or of conduct
characterized by such behaviour. Some authors assume that the tendency to such
behaviour is a component of the sex instinct ; but, since this quality is
displayed in a variety of situations that make no appeal to the sex instinct,
that way of accounting for it is hardly justifiable.

It seems clear that modesty is closely allied to bashfulness. We may confine
our attention to the modesty displayed in sex relations, and it is convenient to
denote this form of modesty by the special term " pudor." We may, I think,
regard pudor, together with all other forms of modesty and of humility, and the
element of shrinking in bashfulness, as all alike expressions under different
circumstances and at different levels of intellectualization, of one fundamental
tendency, namely, the shrinking impulse of the instinct of self-abasement.

The behaviour of the females of many animal species, as well as the human, in
the presence of the male is apt to be coy; this coyness of the female is
essentially a refusal and avoidance of the sexual approaches of the male in
spite of the excitement of her sex instinct. If, as Darwin and Wallace and other
biologists have maintained, sexual selection has been an important factor of
evolution, female coyness has had a great biological

(
502) rôle to play. For, by necessitating the active pursuit and the
courtship of the female by the male, female coyness gives scope for the
operation of sexual selection; the male better endowed with strength or skill to
over-come his rivals, or with beauty of voice or form or color to excite more
strongly the attention of the female, is given scope for the exercise or display
of these advantages and opportunities to profit by them which he would hardly
enjoy to the same extent, if the females of his species yielded at once to the
advances of every male. The probability that female coyness plays this important
rôle in evolution affords some ground for the view that it is the expression of
a special instinct whose function it is to give scope for sexual selection. But
the principle of economy of hypothesis forbids us to make this assumption, if
the facts can be otherwise explained. And it is, I think, possible to regard
coyness as but the manifestation of pudor under the special circumstances of the
approach and pursuit of the ardent male. In fact, it would, perhaps, be more
correct to describe coyness as essentially bashfulness displayed by the female
under these circumstances. For bashfulness, as we have seen (Chapter V), seems
to be essentially the expression of a conflict between the opposed instincts of
self-display and self-abasement. And, in the coy behavior of the female pursued
by the male, her movements of retreat and avoidance, which are attributable to
the latter instinct, are commonly varied at moments by movements of
self-display; the dominance of one or other tendency being determined from
moment to moment by the increase or diminution of the male's aggressiveness.

That the impulses of self-display and self-abasement should habitually
complicate the operation of the sex impulse is an inevitable consequence of the
nature of

(
503) the three instincts from which they respectively spring. For the sex
impulse necessarily intensifies self-consciousness, at the same time that it
impels the individual to seek the presence of his or her fellows and to become
attentive to their regards; that is to say, it brings members of the two sexes
into just such relations to one another as are best fitted to lead to the
excitement of the instincts of self-display and self-abasement. And, in order to
account for the greater prominence of pudor and of coyness in the female than in
the male, we have only to assume that the impulse of the instinct of
self-abasement is in general stronger in woman than in man, an assumption which
is borne out by many other peculiarities of feminine behaviour and feeling. In
both the pudor and the coyness of the adult woman, the direct operation of this
impulse is commonly complicated by other more intellectualized tendencies,
notably by the desire to avoid transgressing the conventions of her society and
the shrinking from the possibility of inducing disgust in the male. For we must
recognize that disgust is primarily and specially excited by the secreta and
excrementa of the body. And Nature, with an utter disregard for the dignity and
high potentialities of the sexual functions, has placed our organs of
reproduction in the closest anatomical and even physiological association with
the body's principal channels of excretion.

The intimate connection of the operation of these two impulses with that of
the sex instinct is clearly illustrated by the fashions of dress of almost every
country and every age, and especially clearly perhaps by contemporary fashions
in women's dress. It is a disputed question whether clothing was primarily used
for the concealment or for the display of the body. The former view has been
commonly accepted; but of late several authors have

(504) argued that the primitive function of clothing was to adorn 'and to
draw attention to the sex characters of the body. But there is, I think, little
room for doubt that clothing has from the first served both purposes, as it
certainly does at the present time. In many subtle ways woman's dress manages,
without transgressing the limits set by convention, to draw attention to and to
accentuate her secondary sex characters; and that it serves at the same time to
conceal the body is also obvious. And many masculine fashions of dress serve the
same two opposed purposes.

The foregoing remarks on pudor, coyness, and bashfulness in sex relations
bear out the view that their almost sudden onset or increase at about the eighth
or ninth year is due to the awakening of the sex instinct. These considerations
justify us in accepting as well founded the view that in the normal child the
sex instinct first begins to make itself felt about the eighth year, though it
is possible that even in normally constituted children it may be precociously
awakened in some degree by improper influences. The most positive evidence that
the instinct is commonly functional in the period of childhood proper is
afforded by the frequency of cases in which children, through lack of control,
bad example, and only too frequently the malpractices of older persons upon
them, are led to exercise or to attempt to exercise the bodily activities of
sex, not only under the form of self-abuse, but also as more or less successful
efforts at connection with one another.

During this period (from the eighth year to puberty) the sex impulse is
commonly weak and but very vaguely directed ; though it is, I think, an
overstatement to say (with Dessoir and Moll) that the instinct is at this age
quite undifferentiated or not at all directed to the opposite

(
505) rather than towards the same sex. During this period the maturation and
extrusion of the germ cells does not normally occur in either sex, even if
sexual connection takes place. This is only one of many facts which indicate
that the excitation of the bodily manifestations of sex is highly undesirable at
this age. During this period the inexperience, the ignorance, the curiosity, the
natural suggestibility and plasticity of the child, and the weak differentiation
or direction of its sex impulse towards the opposite sex, while stimulation &f
it is nevertheless capable of yielding a pleasurable excitement; all these
combine to render the child peculiarly susceptible to perversion of the
instinct. It follows that initiation into perverted practices of any kind is
peculiarly dangerous at this age; and there can be little doubt that many cases
of homosexuality or inversion, and of " fetishism " (the fixation of the sex
impulse upon unnatural objects) are determined by unfortunate experiences at
this age. That the sex instinct so frequently turns towards its proper object
and undergoes a normal development at puberty, in spite of influences which tend
to its perversion during childhood, is strong evidence that its direction
towards the opposite sex is determined by its innate constitution.

Reflection upon these special conditions and dangers of the child in respect
to its sexual development must force us to the conclusion that the strong
condemnation of pederasty which is common to most of the higher civilizations is
entirely justifiable. There is among us a considerable number of persons who
would defend the practice of sexual love between persons of the same sex;
asserting that this is purely a private concern of individual taste and feeling;
and that the present state of the law and of public opinion in this country
inflicts

(
506) grievous hardship upon a number of persons whose sex impulse is
innately directed to their own sex. The answer to all such pleas must be that,
while we may pity the misfortune of such persons, they must, like others born
with mental and bodily malformations still harder to bear, learn to adapt
themselves as best they may to the social institutions formed for the regulation
of the lives of normally constituted men and women, and must, if necessary,
suffer in silence. If sexual inversion were always and only a purely innate
peculiarity, there would be much to be said on the side of those who plead for
individual freedom in this matter. But, so far from this being the case, it
seems to be clearly proved that the example and influence of sexual perverts may
and actually does determine the perversion of many individuals who, if shielded
from such influences, would develop in a normal manner. This being so, it
follows that social approval of homosexuality (even in its milder and less
ignoble forms) tends to set up a vicious circle, the operation of which
misdirects the sex impulse of increasing numbers of the successive generations,
and therefore (as in ancient Greece) tends to the decay of the normal relations
between the sexes and to the destruction of the society which has taken this
false step.

The peculiar condition of the sex instinct in the child, with its liability
to perversion, provides a weighty argument against the too strict segregation of
the sexes at this age. For there can be little doubt that, although excitation
of sexual feeling and activity to crude and direct expressions is very
undesirable at this age, the awakening of the instinct in such a way that its
impulse remains subdued and severely restricted in expression, while directed
towards the opposite sex, is a safeguard against perversion; and it is probable
that even at this age the

(507) energy of its impulse may be " sublimated " in the service of
intellectual, moral, and aesthetic development.

The foregoing paragraph may not be interpreted with-out reserve as a
justification of " co-education of the sexes "; but it does support the view
that the normal family, containing several boys and girls and maintaining
friendly relations with other similar families, provides the best environment
for the child. The repression and sublimation of the sex impulse during
childhood and youth is an essential condition for the development and
maintenance in any society of a high level of culture. And of such repression
and sublimation, respect of the boy for woman is the principal condition. It is
here that the influence of good mothers and pure sisters is of so much
importance. If woman were by nature nothing more for man than an object capable
of stimulating his " erogenous zones " more effectively than objects of any
other class, she would be merely the chief of many " fetish objects," and an
unrestrained and excessive indulgence of the sexual appetite would be the
inevitable rule for both sexes from childhood to old age.[13]
Hence it is supremely important that women should be presented to the boy and
youth only in fair and noble and dignified forms; that he should learn, before
his sex impulse attains its full strength, to regard women with respect as
personalities.

We may enforce this point by imagining a normal boy subjected to influences
of either of two extreme types. On the one hand, he may at an early age be led
to regard woman as an animal endowed with a strong sex impulse, always seeking
its gratification, and ever ready

(
508) to co-operate with him in obtaining sensual pleasures. There could be
no " long-circuiting " or sublimation of the sex energy in such a case. On the
other hand, the boy who knows women, and who knows of them only as beings
superior to himself that deserve his profoundest respect and admiration, and
who, when he learns the facts of sex and feels the powerful and mysterious
attraction of a woman's body, believes that he cannot approach any one woman
with the least hope of intimacy, unless he preserves an attitude of the utmost
delicacy and respect, and then only by way of a long course of devoted service
by which he may show his worth and his superiority to rival suitors; in such a
boy the repression of the immediate promptings of the sex instinct are as
inevitable as their free indulgence in the former case; and the energy of its
impulse will lend itself to re-enforce all those activities which appear to him
as the indispensable means towards the attainment of the natural end of this,
the strongest tendency of his nature.

The alternatives may be stated still more crudely and forcibly. If a boy grew
up in a society in which he might obtain possession of any female by knocking
her down with a club, or by making a lewd gesture before her, his sex energy
would inevitably expend itself in the main in crude sexual acts. On the other
hand, in a society in which all women were noble and beautiful and chaste, there
would be no sexual problem and disorder; for the development of the sex impulse
of men would be compelled to follow the higher course. But the truth about women
lies somewhere between the extremes we have imagined, and women, like men,
differ widely in these respects.

Here we may see a warning against the extreme policy

(509) of sex enlightenment in youth. There is coming into fashion a strong
tendency to carry this policy too far. It is too often assumed that mere
knowledge of the facts of sex and of what is most desirable and admirable in
/the conduct of the sex life is all-important and all-sufficient. But knowledge
may be more dangerous than ignorance; ignorance of some of the facts is a great
and necessary safeguard of youth; a second-hand familiarity with the facts of
sexual vice cannot fail to be injurious to youth, and even a full insight into
the psychology of sex is highly dangerous.[14]
Surely the boy should know only part of the facts! Surely it is permissible to
lead him to believe that all women are more or less as we would have them be in
an ideal world, and to allow men to appear to him as rather better in these
respects than they actually are! The tree of knowledge cannot be robbed of its
dangers, though it be draped in the driest of scientific jargon.

At puberty the child becomes the adolescent, and the transformation involves
many profound changes of mind and body. In regard to puberty the great question
of theoretical interest is — Are all or most of the characteristic mental
changes to be regarded as direct and indirect effects of the maturing of the sex
instinct and its organs, and of the increase of strength of its impulse? Or must
we infer that a number of other innate tendencies that have been latent
throughout infancy and childhood become active at this time? The second
alternative has

(510) been widely taught or implied in writings on this topic.[15]
But the former is the simpler hypothesis, and we ought to explain the facts as
far as possible by means of it, before we go on to make the other assumption.
And it will go a long way towards explaining the facts. But first, something may
be said against the other view.

We know that extirpation of the sex glands in infancy prevents the
development of all the characteristic bodily changes of puberty, and it seems,
though here the facts cannot be so easily observed, that it prevents also the
characteristic mental changes. We should hardly expect these effects, if these
changes depend upon the maturing at puberty of a number of more or less
independent innate tendencies.

Again, those who take this second view have never succeeded in defining the
nature of these tendencies whose existence and operation they assume. There is
no theoretical objection to be made against the assumption; but as a principle
of psychological method we must set our faces against the easy ad hoc
postulation of innate tendencies, whenever we are confronted with a problem
of conduct or of mental development.

The mental change most generally recognized as characteristic of puberty is,
of course, an increased interest in the opposite sex and in one's own sex
stirrings and sex characters. All this we may confidently attribute to the
increase of strength and excitability of the sex impulse. We have to recognize
that, in respect of mental changes at puberty that go beyond these most constant
and direct effects, individuals differ widely. These differences seem to be
determined largely by differences

(
511) of the degree to which the repressive or inhibitory influences are
brought into effective play.

If we tried to imagine a case in which these influences were not effectively
applied, we should, I think, expect, as the principal and perhaps the sole
secondary result of the increase of strength of the sex impulse, an
intensification of self-consciousness, which, as we have seen (Chapter VII), is
always at the same time a consciousness of the social setting and relations of
the self. This intensification of self-consciousness may obviously be determined
in two ways: (1) as a consequence of new and exciting bodily functions, and of
more intense feelings and cravings than any before experienced; (2) through an
increase of interest in other persons, which results in part from the direct
attraction exerted by persons of the opposite sex, and in part from the
enrichment of one's conception of other personalities achieved by reading into
them one's own new experiences.

This enrichment of consciousness of self and of the
self-in-relation-to-others naturally increases the frequency and strength of
excitation of the two great self-regarding impulses, those of self-display and
self-abasement, and of those conflicts between them which we call states of
bashfulness. That is to say, the adolescent becomes more sensitive to the
regards of other persons, he is more elated or depressed by them, according as
they are favourable or unfavourable; and his mind is more frequently and more
intensely occupied with the process of self-display. This is evinced in the
crudest way by his increased interest in his personal appearance, and, in girls
more especially, perhaps; by attention to dress. In boys the self-display takes
more varied forms, display of bodily strength and skill and achievement being,
no doubt, the primary and fundamental form.

(512)

I see no reason to think that, in the absence of the repressive influences
that are brought to bear in some degree on almost all adolescents, puberty would
produce any further mental changes of importance. I see no evidence that any
further changes occur in those communities and in those individuals (e.g. the
savages of our great cities) in which the repressive influences are not brought
to bear.

Among true savages, measures, prescribed by custom and rigidly enforced
(often in the form of initiation ceremonies), impress upon the adolescent, in
the strongest manner, the code of sexual prohibitions and penalties, and serve
as repressive influences. Among ourselves the code is impressed in many ways
(generally less direct than those of savage peoples) which greatly re-enforce
the repressive influence of modesty and that exerted by the respect previously
acquired for members of the opposite sex (especially the mother) and, perhaps,
for the sex in general.

The result of the repression of the sex impulse effected by these influences
may be described in the most general terms as an increase of seriousness and
intensity in almost all fields of thought, feeling, and action, especially in
all that concerns personal and social relations and the conduct of life, and
therefore in all questions of morality and religion. This may be regarded as an
effect of a generalized " sublimation " of the sex energy.

But, beside this, there often occur " sublimations " of the more specialized
kinds to which the term is more usually applied. The intensification of thought
and feeling may affect principally the religious interests, and then becomes a
main condition of the conversion which is so characteristic of adolescence. In
this, no doubt, the sex instinct plays its part in another way

(
513) also, namely, by giving rise to a " consciousness of sin" or an awareness of a powerful temptation to wrong-doing, of a for within one
that one cannot control unaided. Or the sublimation may result, most frequently
and naturally perhaps, in a quickening of interest in romance or poetry or other
form of art.

Notes

Under the name " Instinct of Reproduction," which, as I now see, is apt to
mislead.

I adhere to the description of the structure of an instinct offered in
Chapter II; but I recognize that this summary statement of the relation of the
affective and conative parts of the disposition is very inadequate. The
relation between them is more obscure and in some sense more intimate than
that between them and the cognitive part. For purposes of exposition it would
usually suffice to treat of the affective and conative parts of the
disposition as forming a functional unit.

For example, the cruelty sometimes displayed
or invited in the course of sexual relations (the extremer forms of which
are known as "Sadism" and "Masochism") has been regarded as a component of
normal sexuality. But, as I have argued elsewhere (Proc. of Royal Soc. of
Med., Sect. of Psychiatry, 1914) these manifestations seem referable to the
instincts of self-display and self-abasement operating with abnormal
intensity under the special conditions of the sexual relation.
Compare also my " Outline of Abnormal Psychology," in which this and allied
problems are discussed at some length.

The best-known attempt of this sort is that of Professor Freud, who would
explain the direction of the sex impulse of man towards woman by the
assumption that the male infant derives sexual pleasure from the act of
sucking at his mother's breast. It is, I submit, a sufficient refutation of
this view to ask — How, then, does the sex instinct of woman become directed
towards man? How explain the fact that homosexuality is not the rule in women?

It is the opinion of several of the most experienced and judicious
students of these problems that in some cases of sexual inversion or
homosexuality the direction of the sex impulse towards the same sex is
innately determined; and some of the published cases are difficult, if not
impossible, to reconcile with the opposite view. Such cases obviously lend
strong support to the view that the normal direction of the sex impulse is
innately determined.

Since the publication of the first edition of this book Professor Stout
seems to have adopted this view of instinct (" Manual of Psych.," 3d ed.), and
Professor Lloyd Morgan has recently made some slight advance towards it (" Are
Meanings Inherited? " Mind, vol. xxiii).

I have attempted to develop this notion and to render it more intelligible
in physiological terms in a paper entitled " The Sources and Direction of
Psycho-physical Energy," read on the occasion of the opening of the Phipps
Psychiatrical Institute at Baltimore and published in the American Journal
of Insanity, vol. lxix, 1913. This thesis, which is the keynote of the
hormic psychology, is not peculiar to myself. It is the foundation of all the
teachings of the various schools of psychoanalysis.

" Three Contributions to the Sexual Theory." New York, 1910.

It is not made clear, nor is it easy to understand, what meaning we are to
attach to this statement; for Freud lays down no criterion and no definition
of sexuality.

Notably by Havelock Ellis in his " Psychology of Sex," and by A. Moll in
his " Untersuchungen der Libido Sexualis."

It is clearly brought out in " A Preliminary Study of the Emotion of Love
between the Sexes," by Sanford Bell (Am. J. of Psychology, 1902).

It has often been maintained, and not improbably with justice, that the
backward condition of so many branches of the negro race is in the main
determined by the prevalence among them of this state of affairs.

Those who so grotesquely put their faith in
the redeeming power of mere knowledge of the facts and of the evils that
result from sexual laxity should remember that medical students are
constantly confronted with such evils in all their naked horror, and that
nevertheless they are not as a class distinguished above others by chastity,
even by prudence in these matters.

Notably in the " Adolescence " and in other works of President Stanley
Hall.

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